=======================================You Picked Up the Bomblet
[Posted 3 November 2001]
=======================================

The 2.5 inch by 5.5 inch yellow cylinder is a
model of an unexploded bomblet from a cluster bomb, many
thousands of which are being dropped on Afghanistan by the US
Military to kill people.

The 7.5 inch by 10 inch yellow square box which
you didn't choose is one of the many thousands of food packets
being dropped on Afghanistan by the US Military to feed people.
Of course, once a very hungry person, particularly a child, finds
a nice yellow package with a little food inside, he or she is
likely to pick up the next yellow package he or she finds,
perhaps a little cluster bomb.

[The picture is of Representative Cynthia
McKinney (D-Ga.), testifying during a House International
Relations subcommittee hearing on the war in Afghanistan, was
taken by Kenneth Lambert for AP and was featured in the Washington Post. ]

Message from a cluster
bomb:
Going after 'soft targets' has never been easier

May 12, 1999 - Hi! My name is CBU-87/B, but let's not
be formal. A lot of my friends call me Cluster Bomb. I've been
busy lately, doing what I'm supposed to. And I sure appreciate
the careful treatment I receive from the American news media.

I get a little jealous of the
exaggerated notoriety that the news media confer on outfits like
the National Rifle Association. They get credited with the
proliferation of murder and mayhem.

MY PALS AT THE PENTAGON put me
in the category of a "Combined Effects Munition." My
maker describes me as an "all-purpose, air-delivered cluster
weapons system." Not to brag or anything, but such labels
don't do me justice. When I explode, the results can really be
awesome.

I've gotten to do my stuff in
Yugoslavia this month. One of my memorable performances came at
around noon on a Friday. Some people in the city of Nis were
shopping at a vegetable market when "boom!" I arrived.
It was dramatic as hell.

LOW MEDIA PROFILE

A news article that I found in
the May 8 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle reported that
"the bombs struck next to the hospital complex and near the
market, bringing death and destruction, peppering the streets of
Serbia's third-largest city with shrapnel and littering the
courtyards with yellow bomb casings."

This was one of my few moments
in the U.S. media limelight, so forgive me while I quote some
more: "In a street leading from the market, dismembered
bodies were strewn among carrots and other vegetables in pools of
blood. A dead woman, her body covered with a sheet, was still
clutching a shopping bag filled with
carrots."

NATO talking heads:
"We have nothing against the Serbian people"

NIS, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - A
woman lies dead beside a bag of carrots Friday after a
NATO daylight air raid near a market over the town of Nis
south of Belgrade. Two residential areas and a hospital
were hit by what appears to be cluster bombs killing 15
people, injuring scores with shrapnel and destroying some
30 homes.
Photo by Desmond Boylan

I know, it's immodest to flaunt my press
notices. But people don't get to see those sorts of news accounts
very much in America! If the stories are reported at all, they're
usually buried (ha ha) on back pages of newspapers and rarely
even mentioned on the networks.

UNPLEASANT MORALIZING

Once in a while, some Western
journalist decides to put me down. The moralizing can be
unpleasant. For instance, BBC correspondent John Simpson has been
reporting from Belgrade, and he did a rather brusque commentary
that the 'Sunday Telegraph' in London published a few days ago.

"In Novi Sad and Nis,
and several other places across Serbia and Kosovo where there
are no foreign journalists, heavier bombing has brought more
accidents," Simpson carped. He complained that cluster
bombs "explode in the air and hurl shards of shrapnel
over a wide radius.' And he went on to say: "Used
against human beings, cluster bombs are some of the most
savage weapons of modern warfare."

Cluster bombs like me could do
without the overheated pejoratives, thank you. Fortunately, we
hardly ever have to endure such indignities in the American press.

But please don't forget the
very real accomplishments that I can partially claim as my own.
The next time you see a headline or hear a newscaster referring
to the "air campaign," remember that my achievements
are outrageously understated by such jargon.

IN SEARCH OF SOFT TARGETS

When those high school students
died in Colorado, the news media kept saying what a horrendous
tragedy it was. But what about the work I've done on kids and
grownups in Yugoslavia?

You see, I'm a 1,000-pound
marvel, a cluster bomb with an ingenious design. When I go off, a
couple of hundred "bomblets" shoot out in all
directions, aided by little parachutes that look like inverted
umbrellas. Those 'chutes slow down the descent of the bomblets
and disperse them so they'll hit plenty of what my maker calls
"soft targets." Before that happens, though, each
bomblet breaks into about 300 pieces of jagged steel shrapnel.

Sometimes, as a cluster bomb, I
get a little jealous of the exaggerated notoriety that the news
media confer on outfits like the National Rifle Association. They
get credited with the proliferation of murder and mayhem.

I just laugh when I read the
nasty things that so many editorial writers and pundits have been
writing about the NRA. While they rant and rail against assault
rifles that take a few lives now and again in the United States,
I've been busy slicing up tender human bodies in Yugoslavia.

When those high school students
died in Colorado, the news media kept saying what a horrendous
tragedy it was. But what about the work I've done on kids and
grownups in Yugoslavia? Journalists merely echo the statements
coming out of the White House, mumbling that it's regrettable and
can't be helped.

The pundits keep talking about
gun control. Meanwhile, big bombs like me are increasingly out of
control as we roam the skies above Yugoslavia.

Overall, this has been a great
spring for me. And from the standpoint of public relations, I'm
doing fine. Back in the offices of top Washington officials, and
in the upper echelons of American news media, I've got lots of
friends in very high places. They may pretend not to know me, but
we understand each other very well.
(End quote)

Norman Solomon is a media
critic based in San Francisco and author of books, including "Habits of
Highly Deceptive Media.".

Cluster bombs are prohibited by
the terms of Article 35 of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva
Conventions (Protocol I) which states:

"2. It is prohibited to
employ weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare
of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering."